


Terrible Freedom

by wehavefound



Category: Twilight Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alice-centric, F/M, Human AU, Psychological Horror, Road Trip, The Vast Expanse of American Highways, This is pretty light on the Jess I'm not going to lie to you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-18 01:21:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29235219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wehavefound/pseuds/wehavefound
Summary: They say the open roads hide terrible secrets. That they're a record of all those who have gone before. Rosalie says that this is going to be the road trip of a lifetime, so who really knows?
Relationships: Alice Cullen/Jessamine Hale, Emmett Cullen/Rosalie Hale
Comments: 13
Kudos: 5
Collections: Jalice Week - February 2021





	Terrible Freedom

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Jalice week 2021 guys gals and nonbinary pals! Thank your lovely coordinator tragicallywicked for being so on top of organizing this as always, and enjoy the promises the open road holds.

The road trip begins innocently enough. The family is moving cross country, cars in tow, and Rosalie would never miss up an opportunity to work on her photography or spend time with her boyfriend. It is to be her, Rosalie, and Emmett taking their sweet time as they drive across the country’s length, taking as many rambling detours and backtracks as necessary for the trip of a lifetime.

There is no rush, no expectations, only the wide open road ahead of them and months before anyone is expected anywhere. The plan is to wind down the east coast slowly before they make their way westward, hitting as many states as they can. If they grow tired of the journey they can always turn it into a straight shot. Not that Emmett would ever let them. The open road beckons after all. The feeling of freedom is pleasant and Alice throws herself into the preparation with a fervent energy.

By the time they depart there is a carefully constructed tower of supplies in the trunk of the car and pages of scrawled plans looking forwards to the restaurants they want to try along the way, tourist traps that Alice insists they take kitschy Polaroids at.

It’s the road trip of a lifetime and when they at last shut the trunk and do one final check before they depart Alice has never felt more alive.

The first week they cover very little ground, meandering through jam packed east coast states near them and spending the vast majority of the time clambering over rusted out bridges and down hiking trails that Rosalie swears she’s always wanted to try and couldn’t possibly leave behind.

It’s nice.

The first time anything feels even slightly off it’s down one of those long paths into the forest in the golden hour of the evening. Emmett is making dumb jokes about trail mix, Rosalie is rolling her eyes even as she pulls him in for a kiss. Alice is laughing along with him, skipping on the side of the path until she feels something watching her.

There’s nothing behind her, no mountain lions in the area. It’s well used trail on the outskirts of a populated area. There’s nothing to be afraid of here.

She can’t shake the sense of heavy eyes upon her. Emmett and Rosalie claim to feel nothing, tell her she’s just paranoid. The growing dread within her is diverted from its course when Emmett takes advantage of her distraction to stuff a handful of dead leaves into her jacket. She forgets to be afraid in her rush to return the favor.

Still, she spends the entire hike back to the car throwing nervous glances over her shoulder despite knowing this is merely her own paranoia at play in the growing dusk and unfamiliar forest.

The next few days they actually bother to do more than two hours of driving and she once again forgets to worry in between the license plate games and battles for control of the radio.

They’re getting snacks at a gas station the next time she feels it. A perfectly ordinary pit stop. An ambivalent cashier, one other patron giving overly complicated directions regarding which cigarettes he wants to buy. The buzz of electrical lights shining too bright overhead. 

Alice is in line behind Emmett with her arms clutched round an alarming number of chips when something in her feels a presence creep up behind her far closer than any other customer would dare, can sense the hand reaching out to grasp her shoulder from behind. It’s a sudden feeling and yet nothing has ever been more solid in her mind.

It’s only a moment after she feels it until her heart is thrumming quick within her chest and she can’t help but whip around.

There’s no one there.

She dropped her snacks as she did so and the fall seems almost in slow motion, bags upon bags of loud plastic disturbing the dead air of the store. Emmett is looking at her strangely, the cashier is craning to see over the mounds of low priced junk clogging up the counter. The presence, the weight is still there and yet all she can see is the rows of cold drinks lining the store wall behind her. She would have noticed if anyone else had walked through the door, would have heard the loud chime that sounded off key when they themselves had entered.

“Alice, are you okay?” Emmett asks and it’s not until he says it that Alice realizes he’s picked up her items.

Her hands clutch desperately across her chest and she can’t even force the words out past her clenched jaw, can’t warn him that something is coming for them. That they aren’t safe. That she personally is going to die here, in an utterly unremarkable gas station at the hands of some great evil she cannot even give voice to.

Rosalie comes out of the ladies room just then, wiping hands dry on thick jeans she claims are comfortable. Some distant echoing part of Alice’s mind reminds her they were out of paper towels when she went. There’s a hysterical edge to it. They were out of paper towels. She’s being watched and they’re out of paper towels. Of all the things to still matter in the moment.

Rosalie leaves Emmett in charge of snacks and drags her by the hand out to where the car sits on the edge of the dimly lit parking lot.

“What’s going on with you? Emmett said you just started freaking out for no reason,” Rose says when the door locks have clicked their safety into existence once more. It’s easier to breathe here. The car smells strangely horrible given how relatively short the trip has been so far and the floor is already covered in crumbs. It’s homey and warm and the tight band around her chest seems to dissipate.

“I thought I felt something behind me,” she says. “I swear I did.” 

“Right,” Rose replies and its easy to see that she thinks she’s being ridiculous. She’s the eldest daughter after all, used to ignoring her younger sister’s whines and worries. Alice is used to it. But the terror that crawled into her heart is not so easy to dismiss as her usual cares and she spends the night half awake clutching at her seatbelt for reassurance. 

The further their slow crawl goes the more Alice feels the presence. In the trees on the edge of a rest stop at night. In the bathroom of a 24/7 burger joint that’s definitely violating the health code in every possible way. In the vast parking lot of a superstore. It’s not always there and yet it shows up more and more with each new place.

They’re beginning to talk. Once or twice, odd panic attacks here and there well, they’ve all been there. But she can’t hide that its becoming more than that, not when it’s there so often, not when her responses fade and her gaze slides once more to the empty spaces where the world waits. 

Alice spends a lot of time in the woods these days. It’s Rosalie’s fault of course, although Emmett is usually glued to her side causing mischief. She finds herself wandering often, drifting down the trail to stare at a patch of sunlight that caught her eye or perhaps a stone off the beaten path that draws her. Emmett takes to calling her magpie after he discovered her quickly growing pile of river worn rocks in the backseat and she thinks she likes the nickname, although none of them are particularly shiny.

The feeling is there more often than not. It’s an odd sort of feeling really. Nobody else seems to be aware of it, at least none that will admit to it. Not her travel companions. Not anyone around her when the creeping force comes with them into stores. They could be lying of course and yet the side glances and wrinkled brows she receives whenever she pushes are enough to convince her of their innocence. It’s there for her and her alone it seems.

It’s following her again, just outside of where she can actually see. Not maliciously, Alice has come to know that. A feral dog too afraid of violence to beg for meat and yet drawn to the scent of food. It’s not habituated to people Alice thinks. In the dead of night she wonders if it fears humans the way she fears it.

In the daylight she knows it doesn’t.

It’s the sensation of a person behind you in a dark room, of being looked at in a crowded restaurant. That heavy weight that you know is there somehow. Of walking alone through a pitch black house after a late night horror movie.

Sometimes the weight is gone and she is merely Alice on a road trip with her sister and her sister’s boyfriend having the summer of their dreams visiting every state they can. She joins Emmett in giant leaf fights, dirt raining over them more often than not. They roll down hills until neither is sure their greasy lunch will stay down. She sketches beside Rosalie as the girl hunts for the perfect photo, soothing sound of pencil on paper helping them both to relax. 

She races Emmett into gas stations, argues over choosing the music, drinks crappy coffee from every cheap joint they stop in. It’s the road trip of a lifetime and they are young and happy and alive. It’s everything she could have ever wanted.

Sometimes its so strong she can only cower in fear from the heavy weight of it. It’s not malicious, not that she knows, and yet it’s frightening still. The relentlessness of it all. The heavy weight in her chest as she stares out the car window into what she absolutely knows to be eyes with a conviction she can’t explain even to herself.

They do their best to help. There are times when Emmett has to collect her up off the floor once more to carry her frozen husk to the car, when Rosalie finds her frozen in an open bathroom stall clutching her keys as she peers cautiously out of the doorway because she’s paralyzed by heart pounding terror so loud and heavy and wet she has no thoughts for her companions, must be coaxed out like a nervous pup.

Their worry grows with each new incident. There’s only so much handwaving she can do and her desperate attempts to convince them of the presence did her no favors.

They won’t admit it to her and yet Alice hears the whispered late night conversations when they think she’s sleeping. Sees the wary looks thrown her way when she’s too still in a store for too long, when she does not realize someone is speaking to her. Feels the careful way Rosalie clutches her arm in parking lots as though Alice cannot be expected to make the journey from car to store to car again without shrieking or collapsing.

The busy cities and thick forests of the east coast have been left behind them for the vast expanses of corn and wide open roads of the midwest. Rosalie no longer asks to go down long meandering trails, spending time only where she spies a perfect moment accessible from the road. Emmett is by her side more often than Rosalie’s these days, watching, always watching.

She’s grateful for them to taking care of her. 

They’re in Kansas now. She saw the sign on the side of the road as she stared unblinking out the window. She can’t look away, can’t speak for her terror. Can’t fix the too tight seatbelt that cuts sharply into her. Emmett was the one to put her in the car, tightening it as much as he could. The child lock is on the back doors now so she’s not really sure what help the tight seatbelt would be but perhaps it is less about what it does and more about what Emmett can’t do.

He cares about her she knows. He doesn’t complain when he has to keep scooping her body off pavement, dragging her out from underneath disgusting picnic tables at highway rest stops. It’s a kindness, to bring her back from the place she cannot escape when all she can feel is the vast unforgiving feeling of a creeping horror. They could have left her to her fate so long ago and so easily.

They still haven’t felt it. Or, her, she should say. She’s not an it. Has never been an it. Alice can see that now, now that she’s grown more familiar with the presence. She’s not scaring Alice on purpose, at least she doesn’t think so, and this knowledge brings her more comfort each passing day. It’s getting easier to feel her there and not collapse screaming to the ground.

She hasn’t been as scared lately.

Rosalie has been scared a lot. Alice can see it in the way she tenses, how she makes Alice stay in the car until she’s checked each rest stop for terrors lurking in the bathroom. Her concern isn’t misplaced and yet Alice knows no human predator will take her when she’s overcome. That’s what they’re worried about of course. That she’s easy prey, sinking to the ground where she stays paralyzed with terror. 

She’s started exploring more these days, when she’s not overwhelmed. She creeps to the edges of cornfields bordering tacky shops, to the starts of trails in the national parks they visit. To water filled ditches with mud so thick and pliable she dreams of sinking deep into it.

She likes the abandoned buildings the most. They’re surprisingly common along the vast highway system. Remnants that say we were here but also now we are gone. It’s a strangely comforting thought. Emmett goes with her at first, his large frame seeming out of place in the haphazard sheds she seems to find herself in often. 

He stops encouraging her exploration when they find a family photo in the dirt inside a ghost barn, their faces placid smiles that convey nothing about what drove them to leave. Who they are. She asks him if he thinks they’re hurting and suddenly Rosalie decides that exploring abandoned buildings does not qualify as Alice taking an active interest in the trip.

It’s harder now to make her way to the long forgotten spaces something draws her to and something in her feels betrayed. They were interesting, they were comforting. They reminded her of how it felt to be held and so she slips out away from her travel companions as often as she can just to satisfy her own pull.

They think she’s going mad.

The more times they scream her name only to discover her unresponsive at the muddy edge of a lake, the less space there is to make her way to where she needs to be. It’s a net around her, pulling her closer even as she claws to escape. To find what the presence wants her to see in spaces the world has forgotten.

There’s something there for her. 

It’s out of love for her that they watch her so carefully. She knows it is. It’s still suffocating, still makes her feet twitch and jerk as she fantasizes about making a run for it. How it would feel to dart away from her human keepers, how the rough corn husks against her feet would feel. Nothing at first, inconsequential compared to her speed. Then all too much as she slows and feels the tugs and pulls of the world around her on her frail fragile fleshy pulp of a body. 

Perhaps she would bleed after her wild flight. Perhaps they would bring dogs, would look for her. She’s not aware of much these days but some distant murky part of herself knows she would be considered an endangered person. Nobody believes her after all. Nobody trusts that she’s not crazy, that something out there is singing to her, a siren’s song so enchanting she can’t help but seek her out.

It seems peculiar to realize that Alice had been so frightened of her at first. Each tightening of the net round her neck pushes her more into comfort with her, with her quiet heavy presence that comes and goes but is never far, never entirely out of reach. She speaks to her now, in words that come across as a syrup flowing thickly cross her mind. An impression of the weight that had been more so than actual words.

She loves her.

She is welcoming her and Alice grows to love it, to lean into the bits and pieces of her that she can feel flashing in the endless stretches of abandoned highway around them. There is no fear. Not anymore. There is only a net cinched tight round her neck, her constant companions watching her every move with baited nerves, and the all consuming desire to see the face of the eternal watching that lurks within the frighteningly vast expanses of the open road.

They’re drawing closer to their destination now and this fact makes Alice nervous. Emmett has given up on his goal of spending the entire summer roaming, of visiting each state they can drive to. They’re making a straight shot now, driving up and then over with only the necessary breaks.

Rosalie doesn’t say what she thinks of this new goal and yet it shows in her hands tense around the steering wheel, her grip as she walks Alice into the restrooms along the way. Her sister is afraid, afraid of her.

Rosalie doesn’t understand. 

She can’t see the beauty inherent, can’t feel the fierce energy calling Alice like a beacon. The call is constant now, a droning in her ear that makes her heart quicken in excitement.

There’s only a few days left to escape.

She can’t go back, can’t return to an ordinary beige home and suburban monotony. Not now that she knows what’s out there. Who is out there. It will be difficult to escape, yes, but its not an option she can dismiss. She needs to see her.

They are two days away from their new home when there is an opportunity. Rosalie out at the fuel pumps, Emmett taking a moment longer than her in the restroom. A back door leading to the truck fueling area, no alarms set.

She runs.

It’s easy to escape past the semis, to ignore the call that came from a trucker as he spied her frantic flight. She’s in the woods now, sparse undergrowth ensuring her path is unhampered at least at first. Perhaps Emmett is behind her but she can’t hear him there even as she searches for the sound of pursuit.

She should be out of breath by now and yet she’s still going, feet thudding against the ground matching the rhythm of her breaths and the beating of her heart.

She could run forever.

The presence makes itself known then, so imposing and incomprehensible it brings her to a sudden halt, driving her down to her knees as the momentum fades. The forest around her looks different and she realizes she doesn’t know how long she’s been running. She doesn’t even know which way she came from.

She doesn’t need to, Alice reminds herself, doesn’t need anything but the force that’s driving the air from her lungs and twisting strangely in her gut.

She’s come home at last.

**Author's Note:**

> Remember kids, reviews are to writers as electricity is to Frankenstein's monster.


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